Community foundations sit at the heart of the regions they serve. They have their pulse on critical community issues and engage with local donors, government, business leaders, and community members to make progress. Despite their great value, community foundations are often misunderstood, if they are known at all. So, in 2022, a group of community foundations partnered with the Community Foundation Awareness Initiative (CFAI) to begin working on a national branding campaign to increase awareness and understanding of community foundations. In 2023, as CFAI prepared to launch an awareness campaign about the impact of community foundations, the initiative engaged Mission Partners as their research partner to test campaign concepts with new audiences. 

To prepare for that community research, Mission Partners facilitated a strategy session to understand the campaign’s goals and ideal target audience. Informed by the strategy session and in-depth interviews with community foundation leaders, Mission Partners developed a target audience persona to guide the research.  Mission Partners then worked with community foundations to recruit a representative sample of people who matched the target persona and facilitated focus groups to test campaign concepts.

Based on insights, Mission Partners shared recommendations in the form of a comprehensive report on how to adjust concepts before they were ultimately finalized and moved into market.  

Mission Partners’ research found that the target audience needed a clear answer on why they should give to a community foundation if they already support issue-specific nonprofits. With this key piece of data, the Community Foundation Awareness Initiative’s nationwide creative marketing campaign focused on how giving to a community foundation allows donors to support all the causes they care about at once. After seeing the final concept, more than 40 community foundations signed on to participate in the campaign, exceeding initial expectations of participation. The campaign organizer shared, “Your partnership in this effort has been incredibly valuable. It helped us land on a concept that connects well with our target audience and has been well received by community foundations.”